Electronic mail (“email”) is a form of Internet. Protocol (IP) messaging that has proven a useful medium for several different types of communications. In particular, email has been used to deliver marketing messages to single recipients and groups of recipients.
Initially, such email-conveyed messages were expressed in plain-text format. One advantage of the plain-text format is that recipients can read such messages no matter what email client program (“email client”) they use. A significant disadvantage of the plain-text format is that its display is undistinguished and unattractive relative to other types of visual displays possible on many computer systems, and is in that sense poorly suited to direct promotional marketing and other high impact business communications. Furthermore, recipient activity with the message cannot be tracked, representing another significant business limitation,
Since the advent of email clients capable of sending and receiving email in HTML format, some IP messages have been expressed in HTML format. While this facilitates somewhat richer and more colorful displays than plain-text format, such messages are typically static, not trackable, and still relatively poorly suited to achieve high impact with recipients.
In view of the disadvantages of conventional kinds of IP messages such as those discussed above, new kinds of IP messages that include multi-media elements and that can adapt to the capabilities of a recipient's computer system would have significant utility. Such adaptive IP messages could be used, for example, to replace mailed print brochures with interactive multi-media brochures, or improve the effectiveness of email marketing campaigns.